Shoppers at retail stores often prepare a list of items to be purchased. This shopping list may be brought to the store in paper form or in digital form, such as on a mobile phone, either of which may allow the shopper to be reminded of needed items and to check off the various items as they are placed in the cart. At other times, a shopper may desire to use his or her phone while shopping for other purposes (such as sending and receiving text messages). However, shopping carts do not provide any holder or planar surface for a paper list or a mobile phone. Instead of a planar surface, a typical shopping cart has a handlebar with a horizontal tubular push bar (usually covered by a cart handgrip) rearward of the shopping cart basket that extends the width of the cart, which is used by the shopper to push and direct the cart.
It is inconvenient for the shopper that no part of the shopping cart provides a suitable location for resting a paper or holding a mobile phone efficiently. Because of this lack of a usable stand or holder, the shopping list (whether on paper or the mobile phone) must be held in the hand and must be continuously repositioned into an in-use position as the shopper looks at the list, into a storage position while the shopper obtains the item from the shelf and places the item in the cart, and back into the in-use position as the shopper checks the item off the list. Consequently, over the years it has been realized that it would be advantageous to provide a support for a paper shopping list, and many and various devices have been proposed as shopping cart-attachable stands to hold such a paper list.
Some of the proposed devices are temporarily attachable to the push bar of the shopping cart, to the child seat, or to both the cart push bar portion and the back edge of the conventional child seat, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,058 issued to Harris, et al. in 1985. These temporarily attachable devices must be brought to the store by the shopper, so are not conveniently available for use without forethought.
Many of the proposed devices block all or part of the child seat making the seat unusable for its purpose, which is undesirable. Some of these devices extend between the cart push bar and the bar at the back of the child seat, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,566,609 issued to Kirschner on Oct. 22, 1996. Others are centrally attached to the push bar and extend into the child seat, such as the devices disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,086,960 issued to Schwietzer in 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 2,888,761 issued to Miller in 1958, U.S. Pat. No. 6,453,588 issued to Lykens in 2002, and U.S. Patent Publication No. 20110221149 by Crum.
Additionally, some of the proposed devices are complex (U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,025 issued to Lipton, et al. in 1991; U.S. Patent Publication No. 20110221149 by Crum), have articulation points (U.S. Pat. No. 5,086,960 issued to Schwietzer in 1992), or may be costly to manufacture and may not be durable and robust.
Furthermore, most of the disclosed paper and phone holder accessory devices for shopping carts are only designed for paper lists and are not suitable for holding a mobile phone in a usable position.
Thus, though the crowded field indicates the felt need for a holder accessory for a shopping cart, none of the numerous disclosed devices provides a support usable for a paper (such as shopping lists, sales advertisements, coupons, or the like) or a mobile phone; provides a suitable support that does not interfere with the space allocated for the child seat; has no articulation points, thus increasing durability; is permanently affixed to the shopping cart for convenience of use; and is not complex with multiple interlocking parts, but is simple and straightforward to manufacture. Therefore, the paper and phone holder accessory for a shopping cart of the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art and, in doing so, fulfills this need.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.